The informality discourse is large, vibrant and expanding fast. But there is a certain conceptual incoherence to the literature. New definitions of informality compete with old definitions leading to a plethora of alternative conceptualisations. While some individual studies may apply a tight...

This paper introduces a significant new collection of papers on monetary policy in emerging market economies, written by leading analysts and policy makers. Does existing economic theory provide lessons that are pertinent for designing effective monetary policy frameworks in emerging markets?...

Over the past decade, I have been involved with an “Exposure and Dialogue Program” (EDP), which literally exposes analysts and policy makers to the lived reality of poor women’s lives by getting them to spend a few days experiencing that life. After each EDP, participants are encouraged to...

The turn to the use of mixed qualitative and quantitative (Q-Squared) methods in the analysis of poverty is a welcome development with large potential payoffs. While the benefits of mixing are not in doubt, the tensions involved in so doing have not received adequate attention. The aim of this...

How does concern for consumption relative to others (”relativity”) affect the progressivity of the optimal income tax structure? In this paper we revisit this literature and present a more detailed analysis of the solution to the non-linear income tax problem with consumption interdependence...

Economists are now familiar with “between” and “within” group inequality decompositions, for race, gender, spatial units, etc. But what exactly is the normative significance of the empirical results produced by these decompositions? This paper raises some basic questions about policy...

If the absolute number of poor people goes up, but the fraction of people in poverty comes down, has poverty gone up or gone down? The economist’s instinct, framed by population replication axioms that undergird standard measures of poverty, is to say that in this case poverty has gone down....

This paper presents an overview of the economics of international aid, highlighting the historical literature and the contemporary debates. It reviews the “trade-theoretic” and the “contract-theoretic” analytical literature, and the empirical and institutional literature. It demonstrates...

This is our contribution to the project on Conversations between Anthropologists and Economists, focusing on analysis of the Commons. The short note is in the form of a “talk and response” exchange, coming as close to a conversation as it is possible to do on the printed page. This is worth...